


Five Years Out

by gemini_melia



Series: Old Habits/New Ways [4]
Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Multi, Omaha, Post-Episode: s05e16 Felina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6656707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemini_melia/pseuds/gemini_melia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking the caddy out has become a ritual of theirs, a signaler of needed comfort that can only come from the wind in their hair, the road stretched out before them, and nothing but green, green fields surrounding them for miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mightbeanasshole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/gifts).



> This fic can be read as a standalone or as a glimpse into the future of my [Old Habit/New Ways-verse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/440062).

Some nights, Jesse can’t sleep. **  
**

These days it’s not nightmares. Those tapered off after the first eight months or so, for which Saul is grateful. Those first months, waking to his gasping screams and the look of blind fear in Jesse’s eyes as he clutched at the sheets — or clawed at the walls in those first couple weeks — well, that was almost enough for Saul to wonder if they’d ever find any peace. He’d wondered if this might have all been yet another mistake in their long history of fuck ups, another pipe dream they’d been too stupid not to see for what it was.

But tonight, Jesse is in one of his moods. Saul can hear him wearing a hole into the carpet in the living room, and any minute now, he’ll stop and move to the patio and light a cigarette. He’d gotten better at remembering to keep his smoking outside, for fear of being on the receiving end of Kim’s wrath. They may all smoke like chimneys, but Kim Wexler refused to have her drapes smell of cigarette smoke.

Saul rolls over in bed, and squints blearily at the alarm clock on the bedside table: quarter to one. He groans and tries not to think about what going into work the next morning will be like on so little sleep. He picks up his phone sitting next to the alarm clock and unlocks it, navigating to his text messages and thumbing out a quick text.

_you still up?_

Saul shuts his eyes against the bright light in the darkness, and is beginning to drift when his phone vibrates where he’s left it laying against his sternum.

Kim’s response reads, _client dinner ran long. just getting back now. Everything ok?_

Saul is mulling over how to respond when he finally hears it: the sliding glass door opening and closing, smooth and almost silent if he hadn’t listened for it dozens of times before. If he closes his eyes Saul can almost hear the quiet flick of Jesse’s lighter, but he could be imagining it at this point.

He has half a mind to call Kim, to pout about Jesse kicking him in his sleep before the kid had finally called it quits and abandoned trying to sleep over an hour ago. He holds back, though, knowing that Kim is likely already exhausted. She’d flown out to a client visit back in Albuquerque early that morning, and would be back by tomorrow night — just long enough for the time change to mess with her head.

Saul sighs and taps out his response. _Everything’s fine….just can’t sleep._ He almost tells her he misses her, but he can practically see the snort and eye roll that would get him.

 _He pacing tonight?_ she texts back, almost immediately this time. Saul chuckles, because of course she would know. The thing he loves most about Kim is that she constantly surprises him. But he shouldn’t be surprised, really, because it didn’t take long for Kim and Jesse to form an almost unspoken bond that Saul has never really fully understood. After a few weeks of rocky, awkward interactions that left Jesse locking himself in his room and Kim chain smoking on the front porch, something just clicked. Neither of them would talk about it, but after that they were thick as thieves and Saul suddenly had more than he’d bargained for — and he couldn’t have been happier.

Before Saul can respond to Kim’s text, she follows it up with another. _take the eldorado out for a spin?_

Saul can’t help the grin that spreads across his face at the suggestion. It’s not a new one, by any means, but it is a good one. Especially on a night like tonight — hot and humid, dead of summer. They can drive with the top down, which is Jesse’s favorite.

Saul hauls himself out of bed and responds to Kim’s text with a winky face and a thumbs up emojis — because hell, he lives for the Kim Wexler eye roll, even if it’s coming from hundreds of miles away.

Once he’s out in the living room, he can see through the darkness the shadowy lump of Jesse‘s head and shoulders in a lawn chair on their back patio. Saul doubles back and picks up his keys from the dish on the kitchen counter before moving to the patio door and slowly sliding it open — quiet but deliberate, enough for Jesse to hear him coming.

Saul steps out onto the patio and sits down in the lawn chair next to Jesse’s without a word, just sitting there listening to the crickets and the sound of their neighbor’s wind chimes blowing in the faint breeze. It takes Jesse less than ten seconds of silence before he’s bumping Saul’s hand lightly with his own and offering up his half-smoked cigarette.

Saul can’t not look at Jesse now, and their eyes meet as Saul takes the cigarette from his hand and simply holds it between his fingers for a moment. Jesse’s face is cast in shadow, only illuminated by the fluorescence of the light over the kitchen sink seeping outside and the almost-full moon overhead. But Saul can see how bloodshot his eyes are, how tired he is by the slump of his shoulders and heavy droop of his eyelids.

Saul would love it if the kid got even a few hours of sleep tonight, but he knows the chances are slim, even if Jesse wanted to be asleep — and Saul’s never sure if the kid’s actively fighting sleep or just unable to get any. If he were a responsible adult, a good…boyfriend? partner? ex-lawyer-turned-nobody? Well, it hardly matters because Saul has never been a good or responsible anything, so why start now? It’s not like Jesse would take well to a suggestion of chamomile tea or warm milk, anyway, and their liquor is under lock and key, for special occasions only, as determined by one Ms. Wexler.

Saul takes a few drags of the cigarette, enjoying the companionable silence. Jesse seems to have calmed down some — no leg bouncing or fist clenching in place of the pacing. Just sitting and breathing in the humid July air. It may be just as hot as Albuquerque, but the Omaha humidity is enough to keep them firmly planted in the reality of their changed circumstances. The faint breeze from a few minutes ago has stopped and Saul is suddenly itching to feel the wind in his hair.

He holds up the keys in his hand and jangles them softly. Jesse looks over at them and a small smirk blooms across his face.  That’s it, Saul thinks, that’s just the thing that Saul lives for these days, that tells him that it’s all been worth it.

* * *

A couple years back, the old junker that Saul had bought upon arriving in Omaha, a tiny red hatchback that had reminded Saul of his old Esteem and was all he’d been able to afford, had finally called it quits.

Not a week later, he’d arrived home with Jesse to find a shiny, black Cadillac convertible sitting in the driveway. It was an ugly motherfucker, that turn of the millennium style that sucked the life out of formerly gorgeous cars. But it was a Cadillac nonetheless and Saul loved it. Jesse had stood at his elbow grinning from ear to ear and refused to answer Saul’s questions about where it had come from until Kim came out of the house and smoothly tossed the key at Saul’s chest with a small wink.

Taking the caddy out has become a ritual of theirs, a signaler of needed comfort that can only come from the wind in their hair, the road stretched out before them, and nothing but green, green fields surrounding them for miles.

Tonight, at such a late hour, the small Highway 92 outside Council Bluffs is practically deserted. There’s a 50 mile stretch east of the city that’s straight as an arrow, and it’s become their familiar friend since discovering it.

Saul starts out at a moderate speed, taking the two-lane highway at a modest 45 miles per hour, fast enough to kick the wind in your face. They drive in a companionable silence, with the radio off, and Jesse stares out the windshield, taking deep, full breaths of Iowa countryside air. After a few minutes, Jesse reaches over and places a hand over Saul’s where it rests on the center console. Saul twines their fingers together loosely, and pushes down on the accelerator a bit harder, upping their speed.

A huff of laughter escapes Jesse’s mouth and is lost on the wind. Saul looks over at him, and the kid’s eyes are closed and his mouth is open slightly.  Saul can’t help the warmth that pools in his stomach at the sight: a happy Jesse reminds him of their early days, of that first spark that sent them careening into each other too hard, too fast, and at the worst time. A happy Jesse reminds him of just how fucking hard the kid’s worked to get himself a normal life after so much shit. The fact that he’s chosen to live that normal life with Saul and with Kim, and that Saul has somehow managed to not fuck it up, is more than Saul could have ever dreamed of. He rubs his thumb gently over Jesse’s knuckles.

The speedometer is pushing 70 when Jesse squeezes Saul’s hand tightly in his, and that’s Saul’s signal to gun it just that much further. When the speed tops out at just over 80, that’s when Jesse lets out a loud, long whoop, untangles his hand from Saul’s, scoots forward in his seat as far as the seatbelt will allow, and raises both arms into the air. Jesse yells himself hoarse for a few long minutes before collapsing back into the seat.

When Saul looks over at him, Jesse’s cheeks are flushed, his eyes are bright, and he looks exhausted but relieved. Some nights Jesse’s shouts are angry and coarse and when he sits back, he cries silently, letting the tears track down his face untouched. Those nights are the hardest, but even so, the drive always does the trick. Without fail, each time they return Jesse tumbles into bed next to Saul, curls up against Saul’s back and is asleep within minutes, chest rising and falling evenly - a lullaby to soothe Saul’s own restless mind.

This time when Jesse flops back into the passenger seat, he reaches out to Saul again and twines their fingers together. When Saul slows the car down in their usual U-turn spot to head back west, Jesse leans over and says softly against Saul’s jaw, “Thanks.”

Jesse almost never talks during their drives, and it’s enough to make Saul slow the car almost to a stop. When he looks over at Jesse, the kid is looking at him steadily with eyebrows furrowed.

Saul’s not sure what he’s being thanked for. Maybe it’s for the ride, though Jesse’s never thanked him for that before, or maybe it’s for letting Jesse call dibs on their pizza order that night and for choking down a couple slices of Hawaiian without a single complaint. But the earnest look in Jesse’s eyes holds a weight that speaks more than the words are telling him.

All Saul can do is smile softly at him. He wants to follow up with a casual _you got it, kid_ or _don’t mention it_ , but Jesse won’t stop looking at him like he’s hung the fucking moon.

“Anything for you, kid,” he says, meaning it more than he’d ever quite realized, and catches Jesse’s mouth with his. Jesse surges forward a bit and pushes his lips hard against Saul’s for a moment before easing up and nibbling gently at Saul’s lower lip and pulling back.

For a moment, Saul just wants to sit there and stare at Jesse until the kid looks back at him, rolling his eyes and coming back in for another kiss that would lead to another and another. Something to ground Saul, to reassure him that, even five years out, five years after hell on earth, they’re both still there. Still flesh and blood — battered, but still very much alive. Saul knows it’s not the time, though. Jesse’s said his piece and, by the angle he’s now sitting at, Saul can tell he’s already starting to droop, to drift off in the humid summer night. He’ll probably have to wake the kid when they pull into the drive.

Saul sighs quietly and pulls his foot off the brake, where it’s been resting for the last few minutes. He accelerates back in the direction they came from. Back to Omaha, back to their life, their home, and their future.


End file.
